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Al-Qaeda: No Evidence of Chemical or Biological Weapons, Officials Say U.S. investigators in Afghanistan have found no evidence that al-Qaeda produced or acquired biological or chemical weapons, the New York Times reported today (see GSN, March 18). “They haven’t found anything,” a U.S. official said. “There are no traces showing production at any of the sites we thought might be involved.” Tests such as soil samples and swabs have been conducted at more than 60 sites in Afghanistan, with none detecting any materials that would be used in biological or chemical weapons, the officials said, adding that testing is still continuing. Before the Sept. 11 attacks, the Bush administration had gathered information indicating al-Qaeda had conducted crude biological and chemical weapons experiments, officials said. U.S. forces searching abandoned al-Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan, however, have found no physical evidence of testing or production, the Times reported. If al-Qaeda did conduct such tests, they must have been small in scale, according to analysts. Even though al-Qaeda probably has not developed chemical or biological weapons or the means to produce them, the group accumulated a storehouse of research on biological and chemical compounds, said analysts who reviewed the thousands of documents recovered from the abandoned training camps. According to a review of textbooks and papers found, al-Qaeda also appeared to be training its members in basic sciences such as chemistry, but that training did not appear to have gone beyond a college undergraduate level, the analysts said. There are still sites in Afghanistan that must be tested and evidence of al-Qaeda chemical or biological weapons might still be found, some U.S. officials said. The “absence of evidence is not necessarily evidence of absence,” said one analyst, adding that Bush administration officials believe some concrete evidence could still be found (Johnston/Risen, New York Times, March 20).
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